In my opinion, a complete investigation of the SBI would make the Highway Patrol look good by comparison. But who could be trusted to conduct the investigation? The problems in the SBI recently “discovered” by the press are hardly new. It is just that the insider damage control system is losing control because the damage is becoming too big to hide.

Last year I had the opportunity to serve as an expert witness at a trial that was so clearly a political attack that I said as much on the stand. I also had the opportunity to read to everyone in the courtroom, including law enforcement personnel, an article describing a pretty serious misuse of taxpayer funds that the SBI, DOT, Hunt, Easley and Perdue have all ignored. The malfeasance was too big to have been missed by people in positions of authority, and I made sure in 2008 and 2009 that many members of the press were aware of the problem as well.

Want to see the kind of facts that are not investigated or reported? Read my article titled “SBI is AWOL in Corruption Cases.”

On October 21, 2009, prior to the State Board of Elections hearings concerning Mike Easley’s campaign reporting, former Senator Hugh Webster and former Senator Fern Shubert filed a formal complaint with the State Board of Elections asking that Larry Leake recuse himself from participation in the hearings due to an obvious conflict of interest. The actual complaint is posted on this blog so the public can see why the current revelations concerning interference in the investigation should not surprise anyone.

Interestingly enough, it was not only the papers identified as left-leaning that ignored this complaint. No political party was willing to publicly state the obvious fact that having Leake hold hearings on Easley made about as much sense as asking Jim Hunt or Bev Perdue to conduct the hearings. They’re all part of the same close-knit team, and I don’t mean the Democratic Party.

There is a difference between partisan politics and personal involvement. The problem with Leake is not that he is a registered Democrat. The problem was and is that he was personally involved in the campaign he was theoretically investigating and he has a personal history that suggests a willingness to abuse his position with the SBOE. All of the papers currently complaining about the lack of a thorough investigation knew of Leake’s conflict of interest at the time of the hearings, but most failed to make even a minimal effort to warn the public that the SBOE has a history of ignoring obvious ethical issues.

The SBOE has yet to respond to the complaint, although Gary Bartlett stated privately during the hearings that he would send a letter detailing how it was handled after the hearing ended, and not a single paper has questioned the SBOE’s failure to respond to the complaint. Wonder why?